


for there are riddles to be told

by OfShoesAndShips



Category: Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell & Related Fandoms, Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell (TV), Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell - Susanna Clarke
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-01
Updated: 2017-02-01
Packaged: 2018-09-21 10:20:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 507
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9543506
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OfShoesAndShips/pseuds/OfShoesAndShips
Summary: Vinculus meets again with his King.





	

**Author's Note:**

> This takes place - at least in some form - in the same universe as restless in the unquiet earth. It doesn't really make reference to that, except in reference to the geography and a few inferences about the world they're in.

And the prophet of another place wanders a little way over the moor, until he stands in the shadow of the twisted tree that overhangs the gully. He presses his rough, blue-stained hand to the bark, and under his touch the tree begins to stretch and bend, until he stands under another Yorkshire’s gallows tree.

“We always meet here, do we not, o King?” asks the ragged sorcerer of every London fate ever spun.

“We do,” replies the soft voice of a king long gone nameless.

Vinculus removes his hand and the tree returns to itself. He turns around to face the King, but steps no closer. It does not do to do so uninvited, he has been told, by wives and kings and wives of kings. For once he decides he will listen.

“I did not know you could step into an England that already had you in it,” he says, instead.

“We are not in England,” the king’s voice is as gentle, and his expression as softly sardonic, as it ever was, “We are in the place between kingdoms.”

“You are becoming as riddlesome as me, o King.”

The king laughs. Though it is a little hoarse, a sound he sounds unused to making, it is a sound Vinculus has not heard in many a year and he steps forward, unable to help himself. As he does, the drifting blue light of the between overtakes him, and he reaches out one hand. Greater swirls of blue twist and dive through his fingers. The air smells full of harvest, bright and clear. Underneath is still the metallic tang of blood, but it is fast becoming overgrown.

Vinculus lifts his gaze and again looks at the king. He still wears his crown, though it is no longer the silver circlet of other kingdoms. Now it is a delicate affair of birdbones and ivy twisting through his hair, grown out a little now he has no wig to hide it beneath. His clothes are soft grey and shift with the light like clouds. Perhaps they _are_ clouds. The fashion of the between is strange and inscrutable but they suit him all the same. When he says so, the king smiles and dips his head.

“Kingship fits you well, it seems.”

“As it fits you to lurk on moors and steal pies?”

Vinculus laughs. “You cannot fault me for being ever myself.”

“No,” he replies, “I cannot. Nor would I. The world would tumble from its axis if you were ever more or less than yourself.”

“I blush like a lady, o King.”

He laughs again, easier now than before, more relaxed. “Come,” he says, in the gentlest of voices, holding out his hand, “Come, o prophet. You have not filled every land with your riddles, yet.”

“Do you mean to come with?” Vinculus smirks, but steps closer and twines his fingers with the King’s.

“Is it not tradition,” he says, his dark eyes filled with the shifting of feathers, “For the kings of strange lands to go a-wandering?”


End file.
